100% Baten Kaitos Speedrun Attempt Will Take Almost 350 Hours
It goes without saying that the goal of a speedrunning attempt of any game is to be generally, well, speedy. Even 100% completion runs of games, including all collectables, quests, and other events, can go by swiftly for most titles. But for one game and its current record-holding speedrunner, that’s not the case.
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean is about standard RPG-length for a casual run, between 40-50 hours to do the main quests and significant sidequests. But a 100% run of the game means collecting every last Magnus (cards used for battle, equipment, quests, and basically everything else) available. Many of the Magnus in Baten Kaitos are time-based, created by letting other, easy-to-obtain Magnus sit for one, two, ten, fifty, or more hours. Plus, the time spent in a menu doesn’t count, so you can’t just drop the game on a pause menu and leave it alone. Some Magnus are only able to be obtained at one very specific point in the game if specific conditions are met. Collecting them all is a daunting task even at normal speed.
Baffan is the current world record holder for a 100% speedrun of Baten Kaitos. at 347:52:34. And he’s currently trying to beat his old record by playing 6-10 hours per day for the next 15 days. His biggest challenge will be collecting a Magnus called the Splendid Hair, which takes 336 hours to transform from a simple Shampoo. He also has to take pictures of all the bosses, and collect rare photos of each playable character, two of which are only obtainable in one boss battle, so he’ll have to keep trying until RNG favors him. Baffan will probably end up leaving his game idle for awhile once he’s finished most of the main story to evolve the last of the Magnus, and let’s hope he doesn’t miss any. Since time spent inside menus is time wasted, he has created his own checklist to keep track of Magnus and other objectives.
Good luck, Baffan! We’ll see you in 350 hours.
Source: NeoGAF